Opportunity and high school completion

Abstract

In recent years, the social sciences and educational research have shown increased interest in the place of rationality, choice, and creativity in social behavior. While social and cultural determinism are still conspicuous in such work, researchers and theorists are less inclined to treat behavior as mechanistically determined or to construe students and others as wholly passive products of their circumstances. Using school district-level Florida data for 1984–85, we treat students' decisions to complete high school or to drop out as interpretably rational. Specifically, we interpret such decisions in terms of students' perceptions of the payoffs and costs associated with completing high school. Consistent with this view, our statistical analysis suggests that district-to-district differences in high school completion rates are positively related to post-high school economic and educational opportunities. Further, high school completion rates are negatively related to our measure of the costs of schooling. Dropping out of high school, in this view, need not be treated as a wholly irrational phenomenon. In part, it is a product of students' attempts to respond rationally to their circumstances.